I've noticed that humorous responses tend to get voted down quickly and regularly. Typically software developers have a keen sense of humor, and nurture it as a survival instinct. It does not make sense to me that Stackoverflow's default group responsive behaviour causes vote downs on humour!

What is the driving force behind the peer pressure to answer seriously and in a straight-forward manner?

Humorous responses should be comments to the question. Not a true "answer"
–
SimucalNov 21 '08 at 6:39

2

You should print out a list of the offenders (the humorless misanthropes), like Jay and Silent Bob did, and fly all over beating them up like they did at the end of the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back movie. :)
–
TimNov 26 '08 at 10:47

20 Answers
20

There are plenty of websites you can go to if you want humor - SO is supposed to be about providing useful answers to useful questions.

That's why I also vote down the "What's your favorite data structure"-type questions.

They add little of value to SO - if they were phrased as "What's the best data structure in C++ for representing a phone directory", that would be ideal.

I think the powers that be have basically stated that a small amount of programming-related humor is acceptable but they don't want the site being swamped.

What I tend to do is look at the content of my "answer". If it provides useful information, I make an answer out of it, even if there's a little humor - see here for example. If it's all humor and not really useful, I'll either put it in as a comment (likely) or just move on (less likely, due to my personality type).

I liked your answer and I notice people comeup with generic question to get high reps and badges. If you put up meaningless generic question like what is popular, what is worst, etc you lot of people answer and the question gets badges as well as up votes. Total useless questions.
–
Bhushan BhangaleApr 22 '09 at 9:43

it would be nice if we had a separate site where we could do this...
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Gordon GustafsonOct 28 '09 at 1:55

Use comments to make Jokes :) I personally like to Joke too, but I can also understand the more serious minded that jokes are out of place in serious answers, unless you use sarcasm to Joke but present the truth, however sarcasm doesn't seem to be recognizable by many folk here... so ...

+1 votes: This was helpful and funny.

+1 votes: This was helpful.

0 votes: This was not helpful, but funny.

-1 votes: This was not helpful.

And before you know it we have 20 buttons to choose from, just like the famous windows shutdown menu. Nope, we should keep it simple.
–
GamecatNov 21 '08 at 9:20

1

I like it, but it should be in the FAQ and not clutter the voting arrows.
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Ed GuinessNov 21 '08 at 9:23

1

+1 for the use of 'Mayhaps'. One of my favourite all-time non-words.
–
KieveliNov 22 '08 at 0:56

3

How about "Funny","Informative","Insightful","Flamebait" and "FILE_NOT_FOUND"? Of course, each combination should have a button of its own ;)
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PiskvorDec 26 '08 at 1:46

what about those of us who like having 20 buttons on the Windows shutdown menu??
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quack quixoteDec 11 '09 at 6:15

quack quixote: Well, I for one like the 6 different buttons on the shutdown menu - because it's a menu I don't use too often; but when I do, I need one of the 6 options, each time I may need a different one, and it's no big hassle to spend 20 seconds once a day to choose the right one. On the other hand, I can't foresee 6 options on something I'm supposed to use very often - 20 seconds x 30 votes per day, that comes to ten minutes of time, just for casting votes. To me, that's unacceptable for an action that's supposed to be simple - in addition to the other activities here.
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PiskvorNov 23 '10 at 9:52

Humorous answers yes, humorous comments no. Se, that's the difference. I think they are a distraction and as such they are better suited as comments. It's also easier to follow.
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John LeidegrenFeb 20 '09 at 7:05

Maybe we should ask for a humor tag to mark answers, so those that don't want humor can filter them out, and those that like humor can enjoy themselves. After all Humor is the highest (requires most knowledge and empathy) form of human communication ;)

If an attempt at humor within an answer is otherwise not valuable, and if the question is otherwise serious, and if the answer is distracting, then I think downvoting is justified.

These sorts of "humorous" answers are akin to some jack-ass making jokes or throwing pies at someone trying to change a tire. Humor is fine as a complement to getting things done, when it gets in the way of work, then it becomes a problem. Because, to be honest, a lot of this "humor" isn't as funny as the posters think it is.

As someone above pointed out, valuing humor as highly as concrete help is a recipe for a rapidly diminishing signal to noise ratio, as seen on slashdot and elsewhere.

If you want to make a joke in a serious topic, put it in a comment.

If the entire Q&A thread is humorous, then downvoting isn't justified (unless the joke isn't funny, live by the sword, etc.)

Edit: keep in mind this is coming from someone who posted a funny answer to the (now deleted) "How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" question. Humor is good, but you have to be careful from letting it get out of control.

Humorous responses tend to get voted down quickly and regularly... if humor (or at least attempted humor) is the primary point of the response. This is as it should be, because humor does not help to resolve technical issues nor to answer most questions of the sort that SO is intended to deal with.

If, OTOH, the reponse is a solid, meaningful, and helpful answer to the question which just happens to have some humor mixed in with the solid, meaningful, and helpful information, then I've seen no tendency for such to be downvoted.

The problem is merely that useful content and humorous content tend to be inversely proportional. SO doesn't downvote humor, it downvotes non-helpful answers.

People can downvote, but if there is little downvotable posts, normal but not strictly programming related posts get downvoted easily too. That includes humorous posts but also posts that don't seem to be programming related even if they are at least somewhat.

I don't know if what you're saying is exactly true, down votes aren't consistent for humorous responses. In fact the highest voted answer on Stack Overflow is funny (see here) as it still answers the question, conveys a message and everyone loves it.

Sometimes people are funny enough to get away without answering the question, and in that case the up votes will generally outweigh the down votes. I generally try to go by what the alt tag says for the image "This answer is not useful", and base my up/down votes around that. If you can reply with a clear answer and add in some humour, everybody wins, but if you have nothing constructive to say add it as a comment.